Many devices for trimming or cutting substantially flat material such as printer paper or photographic paper are commercially available. Generally, these trimmers include a raised portion on the back edge thereof located at a right angle relative to the device's cutting blades for enabling straight, right-angle cuts. The material to be cut is trimmed by placing one edge of the material against the raised portion on the base and the edge to be cut under or between the cutting blades and depressing a cutting arm to engage the cutting blades.
While generally effective for their intended purpose, such devices do not typically includes means for aligning a cut at an irregular angle or visually aligning such a cut. Despite various alignment tools, rulers and the like, the actual line of cut of the cutting blade is at best difficult to determine, making consistent, precise, aligned cuts virtually impossible. For example, with guillotine-type trimmers, while the location of the edge of the lower blade, and ultimately the location of the cut, can be estimated by coordination of the visually observed location of where the edges of the material meet the blade edge, once the material is placed in a cutting position, the material covers the lower blade edge and the actual line of the cut cannot be determined unless the material is transparent. Thus, there is a need for a means by which the operator of a paper trimmer can more effectively align or orient the material to be cut relative to the actual line of cut provided by the cutting blades.